After the abysmal, laughable Pope’s Exorcist, Russell Crowe seems to have decided to give it another go in the most meta way possible by playing a washed up actor playing a priest in a film about exorcising demons.
Anthony Miller (Crowe) is getting his life back together after years of alcoholism, living with his troubled daughter Lee (Ryan Simpkins) and starring in a new film. When he starts behaving erratically, his colleagues and daughter aren’t entirely sure if he’s just relapsing or something more sinister is going on.
There’s a fair amount of talent behind the film, with decent performances from a strong cast of actors like Adam Goldberg, David Hyde Pierce, Samantha Mathis and Sam Worthington, but there’s little to latch onto in terms of engagement. Most of it is Russell Crowe pretending to be a miserable actor or occasionally a demoniac monster, but he is never given anything to care about as much as he laments his shortcomings.
The Exorcism is an uneasy, unsuccessful blend of arthouse and grindhouse sensibilities. Director Joshua John Miller has some control of the medium, but instead of really playing with ambiguity he fills the film with demonic possession horror movie clichés and then ends it in a way that makes it precisely the kind of film a thoughtful viewer will reject. The Exorcist, sire and king of the possession genre, was already a thoughtful film about how personal weaknesses control us as effectively as demons, so the extremely on-the-nose metacommentary on display in The Exorcism feels oddly redundant.
It’s hard to recommend The Exorcism. It’s ultimately too silly to be taken seriously and too serious to offer any entertainment to fans of trashy camp. On top of all of that, it’s just not scary.
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